Still waiting for Jaromir Jagr to slow down. Still waiting for Jagr to get hurt. He’s already cost me a case of beer on a preseason bet. In three weeks he turns 42. Yet he has 41 points in his last 46 games. He passed Mario Lemieux on the all-time assists list Sunday and has six points and plus-5 in his last four games. If he continues his current pace and then next year plays and gets another 45 points, he will end his career with 2000 regular season and playoff points. And that’s taking three years off, plus a lockout.

I also like him because I think he, Brodeur and Selanne are the only players in the NHL older than I am! I turn 40 in a couple of months.

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Patrik Elias had his second two-point game in three contests. If the injuries are behind him, we all know that he could easily wind up the season with another 29 points in 29 games, giving him 58. I’m guessing he could still be had for cheap.

Martin Brodeur – six goals allowed on 21 shots and he gets the hook. In 2014 he has given us one win, 1-3-1 and five goals (or more) allowed in two of those games. Consider the torch passed. Schneider’s team now.

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Anton Stralman had two assists and was plus-4 yesterday. I don’t recommend picking him up, of course. Not yet, anyway. But I do recommend watching to see what more he can do. The Del Zotto trade opens things up a bit for him. At this point though, Dan Girardi is getting the secondary PP time.

The Zuccarello – Brassard – Pouliot line had cooled off a bit and I was just starting to think that the party was over. Rick Nash was scoring again, so the ZBP line was losing their appeal. But Zuke tallied two Sunday, assisted by his linemates, so as usual I was getting worried over nothing.

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Here is my Puck Daddy article from last Thursday. A tad dated, but still interesting if I do say so myself.

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Gustav Nyquist is in the zone. He’s been streaky and that will continue to be the case early in his career. But right now he has points in five straight.

Brendan Smith tallied 12 of his 13 points in his last 26 games.

Tom Gilbert with the nice kick save during a scramble:

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Mike Weaver led both teams in the Florida-Detroit game in blocked shots with four. He’s a middle-of-the-road shot blocker – I’ll try to pay more attention to this category in future ramblings (this is by request, via the comments section below in yesterday’s ramblings).

So I will say this, after a bit of quick research – Andrew MacDonald leads the league in blocked shots by a wide margin (178 and second is 141 Josh Gorges). But he also leads the league in BSH in the past three weeks. Using Frozen Pool, here is the report:

And yeah, there’s that Trouba kid again. Start treating him like the next Subban in terms of offensive upside and quick results, if you haven’t already. He does it all and he’s only 19. He’s the reason the Jets can move Byfuglien up to forward.

Four Jets had seven hits or more yesterday – Kane, Wheeler, Setoguchi and Byfuglien. Setoguchi and Byfuglien had six and five on Saturday. I think Paul Maurice has them playing a more aggressive brand of hockey – that trend may be useful for those who have hits as a category. Setoguchi is on a mission – 13 hits in two games, when he had 90 in 53 games prior to that.

Blake Wheeler is having his usual second-half surge. That’s why I kept advising people in the forum to keep him when they were talking trade or in some shallow leagues – drop. He has 34 points in his last 37 games and seven in his last five. The Jets are flying right now and will continue to do so under their new coach. Next season, however, is another story. But they’ll make a run for the playoffs (and fall short, but the run will be exciting – mark it!)

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Patrick Kane has just six points in his last 13 games. I think I cursed him when I noted a couple of weeks ago that he could be a 100-point player (I was commenting that I didn’t think he ever could be, but then was starting to believe).

After a couple of weak games and lengthy stay on the bench, Al Montoya was thrown to the wolves Sunday and came away smiling. He stopped 34 of 35 Chicago shots.

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Interesting decision by Barry Trotz to not play Devan Dubnyk against his former team. It could have been the catalyst to Dubnyk turning things back around. But Carter Hutton won four in a row so Trotz wanted to ride that. Hutton got pasted though, five goals on just 27 shots.

Michael Del Zotto is pointless as a Predator, through his ice time is creeping up. However, the power play time (second unit) is still going to Ryan Ellis – I had speculated that he would lose it to MDZ.

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Hey, another BSH thing I noticed – Edmonton youngster Martin Marincin was second on the team in BSH with four Sunday. He has 20 in 16 games.

For Ben Scrivens – it was his first win as an Oiler and he stopped 34 of 35 shots. A real beauty. His last two games for the Oilers were good ones.

Nice try Nail Yakupov:

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Keith Yandle saw 8:07 of PP time yesterday. Rare to see that number so high. Zero points to show for it though.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson has just nine points in his last 27 games after getting off to such a great start. He is also a minus-9 in that span. In a points-only keeper league, I still like Yandle better even though I love OEL’s upside.

Antoine Vermette is hot right now – points in four straight, plus a hat trick yesterday. He’s on pace for 47 points now. The last time he had more than 47 points in a season was 2010 when he had 65. I consider him a short-term pick up only, at this point.

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With Henrik Sedin still sidelined, look at Torts mixing and matching his lines (update: oops, Torts is suspended – forgot!). From last night:

Dalpe is seeing a lot more ice time and his two points last night show that he’s taking advantage of it.

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Attendance for yesterday’s outdoor game at Yankee Stadium: 50,105. Capacity of 50,291. Good, right? Not how I look at it. This is supposed to be a special event, and special events should be selling out. As soon as they don’t sell out – tickets can be had at any time. If it starts getting easy to buy tickets, it’s no longer ‘special’ and the downward spiral begins. The Winter Classic was great, but I felt it should be once every year at the most. A New Years’ tradition. But corporations have gotten their greedy little paws in a good thing and as usual have sucked (and will suck) all the money they can out of it. A couple more years of this and the idea will be discarded for the next fad. And what will suffer? The long-term health of the Winter Classic. If the WC goes bye-bye after 2020, you can point your finger at this idea.

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For an update on the state of the forum and a state of the sites, click here. It also addresses the fact that you are forced to “refresh” once every morning when you first come to the site and get an error message.

For the basics though, the forum is still the place to be. Ask a question, get an answer. Done. And in the past 60 days I have personally submitted 1100 posts. That’s a lotta questions answered!

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Derick Brassard slew foot: